I use a Canon Powershot SD550 for my cycling photos and a Nikon D50 SLR for my vacation photos. The first thing that I would suggest is forget about the no. of pixels. Modern day digital cameras have more than enough pixels. The caveat is assuming that you won't be printing them out on 24" by 32" paper or trying to crop to get a small section of a pic. I think that the camera industry has figured out that no. of pixels is a metric that people can relate to.
My Nikon takes sharper pictures than my Canon simply because it's got a bigger and sharper lens and that's the primary benefit you get with an SLR. By the way, you can now get 18-200 zoom lenses for SLRs nowadays. I wish I had one.
The camera that you're using now should be more than adequate and I don't quite understand why your pics are washed out. Even in direct sunlight, it should be OK. Perhaps you've got the settings set up wrong and you're letting too much light in. Reset it back to the default position.
Maybe you're just comparing your pics to Taxi's. His are great because he does seem to have an eye for it.
Cliff